Netflix is giving the Spanish-language film La Bola Negra a 47-day exclusive theatrical run, the longest window the streamer has ever granted a single title. The film arrives in cinemas on 16 October and lands on Netflix on 2 December, the company confirmed to Variety.

That runway is nearly three weeks longer than any previous Netflix release. Marriage Story held the old record at 30 days in 2019. Martin Scorsese's The Irishman got 27 days the same year, and Alfonso Cuarón's Roma roughly three weeks in 2018. In other words, Netflix is letting La Bola Negra breathe in theatres for more than six weeks before subscribers can stream it at home.

The move is also a date change. The film was originally set to open on 6 November with a 4 December streaming debut — a 28-day window reported in early July. The new October bow pulls it forward by three weeks and stretches the gap between cinema and streaming to 47 days, setting it up squarely in the autumn awards corridor.

La Bola Negra is a queer epic spanning 85 years of Spanish history, from the 1930s to the present day. It draws on an unfinished fragment by the poet and playwright Federico García Lorca. The directing duo behind it, Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi — known across Spain as Los Javis — also co-wrote and produced.

The cast runs deep: Penélope Cruz, Glenn Close, Lola Dueñas, Julio Torres, Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González, Milo Quifes and Spanish musician Guitarricadelafuente in his acting debut. Cruz, an Oscar winner for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, will also receive a Special Tribute Award at the TIFF Tribute Awards this autumn.

Netflix landed U.S. rights to the film at the Cannes Film Festival after a competitive bidding war, following a premiere in competition that drew a standing ovation and tied for the festival's best director prize. The streamer also holds Canadian rights. La Bola Negra will screen next at the Toronto International Film Festival's Special Presentations section, one of the standard stops for films positioning themselves for awards attention.

It is a Movistar Plus+ Original Film in collaboration with Suma Content Films, produced by Telefónica Audiovisual Digital and Los Esquiadores AIE, with co-production by El Deseo (Pedro Almodóvar's company) and France's Le Pacte, plus the participation of Atresmedia and CREA SGR.

La Bola Negra is one of Netflix's awards priorities for the autumn, alongside David Fincher's untitled continuation of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — written by Quentin Tarantino, starring Brad Pitt, opening 25 November for a two-week global Imax run before streaming on 23 December. Also in that slate: Danny Boyle's Venice opener Ink, Peter Berg's war drama The Mosquito Bowl and Marie Kreutzer's Gentle Monster.

Looking further ahead, Greta Gerwig's Narnia: The Magician's Nephew will open on 12 February 2027 with a 49-day theatrical window before its 2 April 2027 streaming debut — making it the first Netflix release set for a fully conventional cinema rollout. The theatrical window, the gap between a film's cinema opening and its streaming availability, has long been the flashpoint in negotiations between streamers and exhibitors. Netflix has historically kept that gap short. These two titles suggest the math is changing.